


can't learn how to behave.

by hikaru



Category: Cry For Judas (Music Video) - The Mountain Goats
Genre: F/M, Genderfluid Character, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Life-long crushes, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:15:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikaru/pseuds/hikaru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>J is fifteen and three-quarters when they finally go back to the lake house for the summer.  Their mother doesn't say why they’re returning to the fold after so long, just tells J and their sister to pack their bags and be ready to leave on Thursday.  </p><p>J is fifteen and three-quarters when everything changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	can't learn how to behave.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maharetr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharetr/gifts).



> I hope Merge/The Mountain Goats appreciate all of the hits I gave this video on Youtube as I watched it repeatedly to try to untangle all of the threads of the story. In writing about the song, John Darnielle has said that it's a song "about building a vehicle from the defeated pieces of the thing you survived and piloting that vehicle through the cosmos", which is a spirit that I hope to have captured here, in some way or another.
> 
> This story came out a tad stranger than I expected, but Darnielle always writes about such profoundly fucked up characters in his songs, and that spilled over to this story. There are a few scenes that may have unintentionally come a bit close to the embarrassment/disappointment squick you mentioned, for which I apologize. It largely is present with a set of characters who spend a stupidly long time pining over one another, but never use their words, and there are some fights over it, but please trust that it works itself out by the end. 
> 
> A few warnings for readers: the mother of a genderfluid character constantly misgenders and misnames them. I struggled a bit with including this aspect, but decided to ultimately leave it in. The mother gets rightfully called out on it and overall, J has a very loving and supportive family to surround them. Additionally, there are a few gendered slurs/insults thrown around. If you (or any reader) wants more information on any of this before reading, please leave a comment and I will respond (thanks, anonymous Yuletide commenting). 
> 
> Finally, apologies to John Darnielle, Peter Hughes, and Jon Wurster over the fact that I borrowed their first names (or variations thereof) for the characters they play. This is not RPF in the slightest, it's just that by the millionth viewing of the video, I realized I couldn't think of them as anything other than JD, Peter, and Jon. By no means do I intend to imply that the characters in this story are at all similar to the real-life versions of the men (well, except for Peter Hughes' love of baseball and cars, that's true in both places).

_**i. speed up to the precipice** _

**_J_ **

J is four whenever they throw a tantrum over the soft pastel-colored dress their mother has laid out for them to wear to church.  “Wanna be like daddy,” they say; daddy, with his plaid shirts and his worn jeans, or his uniform and his spit-shined shoes, or even his suit and tie that only gets pulled out for very serious events.  “Don’t wanna be like you and sissy.”  J’s mother forces them into the dress anyway, kicking and screaming, but no one can make them enjoy it.

J is six whenever they announce to their family that they are a boy.  Everyone is gathered for the annual lake house party and they say it right there, with their mother and their father and their uncles and cousins circling nearby.  Uncle JD looks unsurprised, but everyone else looks mildly uncomfortable.  “Don’t be silly,” says J’s sister, Claudia, breaking the awkward silence, “you’re not a boy.”  J is unperturbed, and retorts back with “am so!” before running off to find someone to light the sparklers that they’ve been toting around.

J is twelve whenever they first feel that tug low in their gut whenever they’re looking at a girl.  They don’t know what it means, not exactly, but they know when they see Katrina standing by the lake, hip cocked to the side as she digs tiny circles in the dirt with her bare toes, that what they’re feeling are those _butterflies_ that Claudia always squeals about whenever she’s gossiping about Anthony or Travis or DeJuan or any of her other crushes of the week.  When they mention to their mother in passing that they really hope that their cousins invite Katrina to come to next year’s summer party, their mother frowns deeply, and maybe it’s because of Katrina, or maybe it’s because J’s dad gets blown up in Afghanistan later that year, but that’s the last summer that they go to the lake house.

J is fourteen when they cut off all of their hair and tell their family to start calling them J, instead of their birth name.  Most of them comply, some more reluctantly than others, but their mother still looks at them like her family is fracturing even more, like she’s losing a daughter, just another in a long line of betrayals.  J’s mother keeps calling them _Jodi_ , and it still stings every time, but overall, J feels more free than they ever have in their life, though, so fuck all of them, every last single one.

J is fifteen whenever they finally start to feel settled in their own skin, their own fluidity, neither male nor female, not always, not all of the time.  They’ve been e-mailing back and forth with Uncle JD all year, ever since that first _hey can you just call me j for now on that would rock thx luv you_ email went off into the ether.  Sometimes J thinks that Uncle JD is the only person who actually _hears_ them, who hears their pain and says _yes, this is shit, and i am not denying the shittiness of all of the people and the haters and the dickbags in your life right now, j, but you are strong and ferocious and you will make it through_.  Uncle JD sends them some books to read, but the one they connect with the most isa book about the Devil, of all things, and after J and Uncle JD talk about it, he immediately ships them a whole box of books about Satanism and the Occult and all sorts of things that blow their mind.  J hides these books from their mother, who has taken to lighting candles to more saints than J even remembers from Sunday school.  J reads in secret, and starts finding themselves in some very simple ideals: respect, indulgence, choice, freedom.

J is fifteen and three-quarters when they finally go back to the lake house for the summer.  Their mother doesn’t say why they’re returning to the fold after so long, just tells J and their sister to pack their bags and be ready to leave on Thursday.  

J is fifteen and three-quarters when everything changes.

***

**_Peter (five times that peter fucks it up and one time that maybe he doesn’t)_ **

i.

Peter, Jon, and JD spend a lot of time at the lake every summer.  All because their parents are staying up at the house doesn’t mean that they’re actually paying attention to them, so it’s a little taste of freedom, even for a little while.  The summer after Peter graduates high school, they meet some new girls at the lake.  The girls are friends of that Harrison girl from the next house over, Lisa or Lilac or whatever her name is.  Peter doesn’t give a fuck about Lilac Harrison because he only has to see her whenever she decides to come sit out at the lake, and besides, she’s always got her gaggle of girls surrounding her. They’re laughing, and with the way she keeps glancing over at him, sly smile spreading across her cherry-red lips, he can only assume they’re laughing at him and his awkward, knobby knees and too-pale skin that burns in the hot summer sun.

He doesn’t give a fuck about Lilac Harrison, for those reasons and many more, but he does give a fuck about the new girls, especially Rose, with her long, tan legs and her sun-bleached hair.  Rose is more interested in splashing in the shallow end of the lake than actually gossiping with Lilac, which makes Peter like her even more.  Peter doesn’t think she’s interested in him, though, and she’d probably prefer Lilac’s gossip over his encyclopedic knowledge of baseball stats, and he’s too shy to find out for sure, so he just sits in the shade, trying to look busy with the motorbike engine he’s trying to make work again and steals glances at Rose as she frolics in the water.

Jon and JD are braver than Peter is when it comes to actual human interaction, so they spend their days horsing around with Rose and the other girls, and by the end of the summer, Jon’s worked up the courage to sling an arm around Rose’s shoulders, his fingers brushing against the bare skin of her arm, and Peter feels angry and uncomfortable and a little bereft.  

ii.

Rose is at the lake again next summer, but she hardly has eyes for anyone other than Jon.  They’re mostly inseparable, even when Jon pulls typical teenage boy stunts, like ignoring Rose in favor of talking shit with the other guys, or flirting with other peoples’ girlfriends, or getting drunk on cheap beer they stole from the refrigerator when no adults were around.

There’s a moment where Peter and Rose are left alone while Jon and the others have let the evening devolve into a drunken game of football.  They’re both slouched in lawn chairs next to the un-lit fire pit, and Rose looks over at him and Peter _swears_ that he sees a glimmer of curiosity in her eyes.  

He wants to tell her right then to come away with him, that he will be better for her than Jon ever could be, but the words won’t come out of his mouth.  Instead, they just look at each other for a long time, Rose smiling enigmatically and Peter feeling certain that if he actually opens his mouth, he’s going to say something irredeemably stupid and then the moment will be gone.

“You don’t like hanging out with the other guys that much, do you?” she asks him, looking away from Peter.  He follows her gaze, which is trained on the group of boys passing the football around.

“Nah,” he says, and his voice is a little hoarse from being quiet for so long. “Not when they’re playing tackle, at least.”  Tackle the nerd is the favorite pastime of some of Jon’s friends, and Peter’s already had his nose broken once during a game a few summers ago; he’s not aiming to do it again.

“What _do_ you like?” Rose asks, and it takes everything Peter has to not answer _you_.

Instead, he gives a more realistic answer.  “Baseball, old cars, physics, stuff like that.”

Rose almost looks disappointed with his answer.  “Oh,” she says, and they both lapse into an uncomfortable silence.

Peter wonders if he should have told her the truth.

iii.

The only year Peter skips the lake house family gathering is the year that Jon proposes to Rose. That wasn’t an accident.  He knew that he wouldn’t be able to cope with watching Jon get down on one knee in front of everyone and tell Rose he’s going to love her forever, so he takes a summer job up in Maine, working at a camp for gifted kids.  It’s not always his idea of fun, talking about the benefits of an engineering degree to kids who are probably smarter than he is, but it’s better than the alternative.  

Jon is his brother, and Peter loves him, but Jon is a fucking stupid asshole, and he is going to find some way to fuck this up, Peter knows it, and he thinks that Jon doesn’t deserve Rose.  Not now, not ever.  Peter knows that he needs to hang it up, he needs to get over Rose, because she’s never going to be his, but he doesn’t think he can ever stop loving her.

Instead, he calls the lake house the next day and shares his congratulations with Jon and Rose both.

“Do you think you’ll get down to the house at all this summer?” she asks him, once the appropriate words of congratulations and excitement have been exchanged.

“Probably not,” he lies.  “I’m really busy up here, and I don’t really get much time off, we’re short on staffers.  It doesn’t make sense for me to drive all that way in for just a weekend. I’m really sad I missed your big moment, though.”  More lies.  He _is_ busy with the kids, but he’s not sad he missed out on the very public proposal.

“Oh.  Well.  Maybe Jon and I will have to come up to see you. You and Jon will have plenty to talk about, anyway; he said he already knows he wants you as his best man.”

Peter feels like his heart is just going to shrivel up right then and there.  He can’t imagine standing there silently and watching his brother marry Rose.  “Yeah, I’d love to have you guys up sometime this summer, that might be easier.  There’s a guest cabin here, and some of these kids might want to talk to Jon about enlisting.  We’ll have to figure it out.  Listen, I’ve got to go.  Welcome to the family, officially, I guess, yeah, Rose?”

“Thanks, Peter,” she says, and he can hear the smile in her voice, and he wishes it were actually for him.  “It’s nice to be official.  Don’t work too hard up there.  We’ll talk soon.”

“Bye, Rose,” he says softly, and as he pulls the phone away from his ear, he thinks he may have heard a quiet _love you, Peter,_ on the other end, but he’ll never ask about it and he’ll never know for sure.

iv.

Peter stands up at the wedding, right behind Jon, and he clenches his hands tight around the ring box that is his responsibility to hold.  During darker moments, he thinks that Jon chose him as best man just to spite him, knowing the torch he’s carried for Rose for all these years.  It’s become a joke between the two of them, as they’ve grown into adults, more sure of themselves, and Peter can take it now in a way he wouldn’t have been able to when he was eighteen and smitten.  

That doesn’t mean that when he sees Rose walk down that aisle, radiant in her white dress, that his heart doesn’t stop, his breath doesn’t catch in his throat.

That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t pretend that Rose’s beaming smile is for him, instead of for Jon.

That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t harbor fantasies of making some kind of stupid, tacky rom-com last minute declaration of love right there in front of all of their friends and family.

He knows he’ll never have Rose, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t pretend.

v.

J and Claudia are in the house with JD, who somehow turned out to be the only person in this family able to keep his shit together, which is coming in handy now.  He’s sharing quiet stories about the old days with them, about when they were boys and their world revolved around summers at the lake house and the trouble they could get up to.  It’s a distraction, and it’s what they need right now.

It’s what Rose needs, too, as she sobs and sobs, face buried in her hands.  They’re in Peter’s half-built car, because it’s a refuge, because it’s Peter’s safe space, and because no one else will bother them there.  Peter won’t lie, he wants to curl up and sob, too, because it’s his brother he just helped lower into the ground, but out of everyone in the family, Rose came to _him_ to fall apart in front of after the service for Jon was over, and he wants to try to be strong for her.  “I just miss him so much,” she chokes out, and Peter exhales slowly before reaching out to rest one shaking hand on her shoulder.  “I’m so lost.”

“I know,” he says dumbly, not knowing how to comfort her when he hasn’t even found solace yet himself.  Rose turns to him, the new leather of the car seat squeaking underneath her, and she leans into Peter then, pressing her face into his overcoat.  

“I’ve lost everything.” Rose’s voice is muffled against Peter’s chest.  He shifts awkwardly against her, finally getting his arms around her to hold her.

“No, you haven’t. You have the kids,” he says, “and you’ll always be family to me, no matter what, even without Jon.”

It isn’t what Rose wants to hear, and her mood shifts instantly.  She pulls away and laughs harshly.  “Family to you, huh?”  There’s a bitter edge to her voice and it frightens Peter.  “Family to a bunch of freaks and cowards, with JD filling my little girl’s head with lies and evil, and you?”  She pokes Peter in the chest. “You’re just hanging on to see if you’ll get a chance to fuck me now that Jon’s gone, aren’t you?”

Peter pales and scoots away from her in the car, not wanting to do anything else to help encourage that line of thought.  “Rose, no,” he says, feeling an unfamiliar sense of panic surging in him.  “Rose, no, that’s not -- I wouldn’t -- that’s not what I was saying, you’re family because you’re my brother’s wife, you and J and Claudia will always have a place here, Jon would have wanted that.”

“You don’t give a fuck what Jon would have wanted, and you never have, not since we were kids.  You’ve never stopped being jealous of him, and now you think that because he’s gone, you can just replace him, you can be Jon 2.0, same song, different verse, Rose won’t mind fucking the next brother in line as a replacement for what she lost?”  Tears stream down her face but she ignores them, too wound up by years of anger finally being unleashed.

“That’s not what I meant, Rose.  I’m not talking about anything else, that’s all in the past, I just want you and the kids to know you’re always going to be welcome here.”

“So you can keep trying to worm your way into my life?  What’s _left_ of your brother isn’t even in the ground for a _day!_ It’s not going to happen, you arrogant son of a bitch, this is _not_ your chance--”

Peter, frustrated, interrupts her and makes the worst declaration he possibly could. “You never _gave_ me a chance! You’ve never _seen_ me, Rose, I’ve loved you for years but you never even looked at me twice.”  The words tumble out before he can stop them, and in the deadly silence that falls between them, he knows he’s made the wrong choice.

Rose inhales sharply, and before either of them even know what’s happened, she’s slapped him, the crack of her palm striking his cheek rings loudly in the car.  Rose is shaking, an angry red flush spreading high across her cheeks, and she spits out, “you are _such_ a selfish bastard, you should be ashamed of yourself,” before clambering from the car and storming from the garage.

Peter is left with his dignity in tatters, and he deserves it.

i.

“Rose, hey.”

She’s quiet for a long time. Peter thinks she’s probably looking at her phone’s screen, at a name that hasn’t popped up in years, not since their fight after Jon died, and wondering _what the hell_.  Slowly, they had reestablished contact, but it was an unspoken rule that they never, ever talk in real time.  Mostly, they just email, and mostly they just talk about J and Claudia. Regardless of everything else that transpired, those kids were family and they needed that connection. The easy companionship that Peter and Rose once had is gone, but he’s not going to give up on her just yet.

“Peter.  What do you want?”

He decides to just come out with it, instead of beating around the bush.  “I think that you and Claudia and J should come to the lake house this summer.”

“We’re not coming, Peter.”  She cuts him off before he even has a chance to explain.  “I can’t go back there.”

“Rose, come on.  If it’s because of what I said--”

“Goddamnit, not everything is about you, Peter,” Rose snaps.  The line is silent for so long that Peter thinks she may have hung up on him, but then she goes on.  “I can’t go back because everywhere I look, I see Jon.  It’s only been a couple of years, I don’t know what else you expect from me. I still see him by the lake, I see him in the house, I see him leaning under the hood of your shitty half-built car with you, I see him _everywhere_ and I’m still not ready.”

“Rose --”

“Maybe I’m punishing the girls for it, but I can’t handle the idea of seeing that place again, Peter, and you can’t make me.”

“Claudia and J both want to come, Rose.  It’s been so long and so much has changed for them.”

“You know my children better than me?”

“They might not talk to you about it, but they talk to JD and me, you know that, and you can’t keep them away forever because you’re afraid of ghosts.”

Rose laughs bitterly.  “I don’t know how you live at that house and don’t see him everywhere you go.”

“I _do_ , Rose, that’s the thing.  We grew up together here, of _course_ I see him everywhere I go. Moving back helped me make peace with it.” He’s not stupid enough to think that what worked for him will work for Rose, though, and he already wonders if he should have made this call at all.  He’s in too deep now, though. Peter sighs, then comes out with the rest of it.  “Look, I’ll pay for your plane tickets up here, a hotel if you and the kids don’t want to stay at the house.  Give Claudia and J at least one good summer with the family they never get to see anymore.”

Rose sighs. “What’s your motivation, Peter? Why do you care so much this year?”

“I care every year.  This is just the first year you’ve bothered to hear me out.”

“I don’t know what you think you’re going to get out of this.”

“I don’t have any ulterior motives, I just want the family to be in one place, just once.  This isn’t about me, Rose.  I’ve said some stupid shit, but, just for once, can you believe me when I say I’m not trying to _get_ anything?”

“I’m not going to take your money, but I’ll think about it, Peter.”

“That’s all I want, Rose, just think about coming.  That’s all.”

***

**_JD_ **

JD was born Joseph Darryl, but he was always called JD by his father, and it stuck.

JD was born first, quiet and red-faced and fiercely independent, and nothing ever changed, not even now, when he is on the other side of forty and watching his family tear apart at the seams.

His youngest brother is dead, leaving behind a wife and two children, who are confused and lost and afraid.

His middle brother is a wreck of nerves and lies and regret, hung up on things that happened decades ago.

JD has always known that he didn’t quite fit in their family, but he never knew what to do with those feelings, and then J comes along, looking for an adult who will not just listen to them, but who will _hear_ them, and if there’s anything JD knows he can do, that’s it. He’s been navigating this bullshit world and this fucked-up family, with his non-conforming beliefs and his non-conforming self, for forty-some years now, and he might not know how it feels to be J, exactly, but he knows how it feels to have your own family tell you that you are _different_ and _wrong_. 

They’ve kept in touch, JD and J, especially over the past few years, when J was struggling with being true to themselves, and struggling with the loss of their dad, and with so much else.  JD doesn’t care that Rose doesn’t like it; Rose is doing her child wrong by hiding behind her religion and living in denial, and he’s told her that time and time again.  He doesn’t know that Jon would have been any better, though, if he were still alive, and so JD takes it upon himself this year to be the mentor that J needs and deserves.

They’re family.  There’s no other choice.

***

**_ii. slam on the brakes_ **

**_Rose_ **

_16_

All the summers she’s been visiting Lynnie Harrison and she’s never actually gone to the lake down over the hill.  The Morgan family owns the property and every summer, their whole extended family descends and every summer, Lynnie talks about how annoying they are, but this year, Lynnie actually wants to go.

“The boys are actually starting to get cute,” Lynnie says, and when asked which ones, she says, “all of them, duh.”

So Rose goes reluctantly, and she splashes around in the shallow end of the lake with her girlfriends, but she keeps looking back at the Morgan boys: the oldest one, engaged in deep, serious-looking conversation with some of the other kids; the middle one, quiet and awkward as he lurks just on the periphery of the group; the youngest, bursting with confidence and bravado.

Rose doesn’t like his swagger; she likes the looks of the quiet and shy and secretly brilliant boy, instead, but he’s lost in his own world, she thinks. The whole summer goes by and the middle Morgan boy stays under his tree, with his wrenches and screwdrivers and silent determination to never be seen.  It’s the youngest one who takes the whole summer to actually get to know her, and by the time she’s spending her last night at the lake, she realizes how happy she is whenever he wraps his arms around her.

_21_

Rose isn’t sure that she wants to get married, not really, but she knows that Jon’s been planning on asking her this summer for ages, and she knows that she’s going to say yes, despite her ambivalence.  

Mostly because she’s pregnant, and her only choice is to keep the child growing inside of her, because, to her, there’s no other way, and in the Ortiz family, there are no children born out of wedlock, even if the marriage itself winds up being a disaster.

No one knows about the baby other than Jon, and she’s sworn him to secrecy.  Even his brothers can’t know, no matter how much it pains him to keep that secret.  They’ll pass off the timing of the wedding as not wanting to wait any longer, with Jon due to leave for South Carolina for recruit training soon.  No one needs to know the truth.

When the big moment comes, it’s at the lake house, right before all the men go off to set off some fireworks.  Of _course_ it’s at the lake house.  Their lives revolve around the lake house, and Jon is less about romance and more about grand gestures and showing off in front of his family, although he’s disappointed that Peter is missing.  He always wants to show off in front of Peter.

“It’s probably best he didn’t come,” Jon says later that night, when they’re hiding away in their room from the rest of the family.  “He’s had a thing for you since that first summer, you know, but he was too much of a pussy to talk to you.”  He takes another swig from his beer and misses the way Rose’s brows crease together.  “Petey probably would have gotten drunk and stupid and then I’d have to kick his ass.”

“Come on, Jon, don’t be mean,” Rose says with a heavy sigh.  “Peter’s just shy, he never talks to anyone.  Don’t read anything into it.”

“I’m not reading anything into _anything._ When we were kids and we’d get back up to the from the lake, he’d spend the whole night talking about you, every night.  I thought JD was going to smother him in his sleep, he would never shut up.”

“Whatever. That was a long time ago, Jon.  Just let it go.”

He finishes off the beer and sets the empty bottle down on the nightstand, then rolls over to curl against Rose.  “Yeah,” he agrees, “especially since you’re going to be my woman soon, for real.”

_30_

Her life isn’t what she thought it would be.  

She has two wonderful girls, only one of them keeps saying she _isn’t_ and Rose doesn’t know what to do about it.   _What to Expect When You’re Expecting_ doesn’t have a chapter on coping with your child’s insistence that she is the opposite gender.

Things with Jon swing wildly between fantastic and dismal, but she doesn’t have time to do much work on that, since Jon is almost always on base, and when he _is_ home, he’s in his office, wrapping up paperwork, or going through his mail, or _something_ , and he doesn’t have time for Rose’s angst over the state of their offspring.

Every so often, she picks up the phone to call a girlfriend to chat, but winds up dialing Peter instead, and they talk for hours in a way they never managed when they were kids.  Peter could hardly string five words together in front of her when they were teenagers, but now, he’s full of eloquent thoughts and reassurances that everything will be okay, that she has to just trust in herself.

Sometimes, as they talk, she remember’s Jon’s insistence that Peter has loved her for as long as he’s known her, and she wonders if that’s why he’s so kind and thoughtful and willing to hear her whenever Jon isn’t.

She doesn’t think she cares.

_37_

Getting out of the Marines was supposed to be safer, better, less terrifying, but even after he’d been discharged for years, Jon couldn’t stay away.  Rose cried and begged and pleaded, but he still took a job with a security contractor and got sent to Afghanistan and now he’s _dead_ and she can’t even say _I told you so_ because everyone will say she’s a heartless bitch.

Jon always wanted to be buried at the lake house, because of course he would, and Rose hates it and never wants to see the lake house again, but she does it anyway, because it was what Jon wanted and they may have been disappointing each other time and time again for the past twenty-some years, but she’ll give him this and then she’ll be done with the Morgans and the lake house and all of their bullshit.

Everyone treats her like she is a delicate, special flower, but she holds her own all through the service and the burial in the family plot (because of course almost all of the fucking Morgans have been buried at the fucking lake house).  She is not fragile, she is not going to break, she is going to take her girls and she is going to go back downstate and make it on her own.

The only one who doesn’t treat her like she’s going to break is JD, and thank God for him, no matter how much she hates the fact that thinks he knows better than her, with encouraging Jodi’s quirks, constantly telling her that calling her daughter by her own given name instead of _J_ is offensive, but at least he isn’t dancing around her like she’s made of glass.  

When she finally does fall apart, though, she picks Peter to do it in front of.  Someone should pick her up when she falls, and she had hoped Peter would do it, but instead, everything he says just gets under her skin, and before she knows it, she’s screaming at him, she’s saying the dark things she’s thought about for years and years but has never told him.

“You never even looked at me twice,” Peter blurts, and she wants to tell him that he’s hopeless, stupid, ignorant, because she only had eyes for him that first summer, with his quiet competence and dark lashes and crooked smile, but he spent all of his time hiding from her and hiding from his feelings, and she thinks that everything could have been different if she and Peter had _ever_ been on the same page, but they weren’t and never would be, and now she is a 37-year old widow with two kids and half of the time, she can’t look at them without seeing their father as he was, and imagining how he is now, in pieces in a box six feet under.

She doesn’t say any of this.  Instead, something breaks inside of her and she reacts on instinct, rears up and strikes out, because _fuck Peter_ for thinking that _now_ was the time to finally own up to his feelings, twenty years later with her husband -- his brother! -- barely even in the ground.

Rose hurls herself from the car, ignoring the hot tears spilling down her cheeks, ignoring the sting in her palm where she cracked it across Peter’s face, and storms into the house.  She is getting Claudia and Jodi and she is getting the fuck out of here.

 

_40_

Rose goes back to the lake house for the girls.  She tells herself during the entire drive that this is the only reason she’s going back.  Claudia is going off to college at the end of summer, and Jodi is getting more and more strange and withdrawn, and Rose hasn’t felt like a Morgan in years, but Peter’s right; she’s the only one still afraid of the ghost of Jon Morgan.

She thought that she and the girls would only stay for the weekend, but Rose is surprised by how easy it feels to be around the whole family again, and staying for the weekend turns into staying for the better part of the summer, just like in the old days.  No one acts offended that she had a multi-year tantrum and excised herself from the family.  They act like no time’s been lost at all, and soon she’s laughing and joking and toting Claudia around to reintroduce her to everyone, the distant second cousins and the family friends and the neighbors.  Lynnie Harrison was too busy to get time off from work, she was told, but she sends her boy Caleb, in her stead.  Caleb takes Claudia under his wing, and before Rose knows it, her oldest girl is off laughing it up with all of the other teenagers, down by the lake.  It reminds Rose of her summers at the lake, back when she was still just Rose Ortiz, before she ever got absorbed into the Morgan family, and she only hopes that things end better for Claudia than they did for her.

In a quiet moment, she sits in the room that she and Jon used to stay in and lazily sorts through boxes of stuff they’d left behind after staying at the lake house one long summer while their house was being remodeled.  Flipping through old cards and letters and knick-knacks give her something to do with her hands, but it’s a photo of Jon, all smiles in front of the American flag, that gives her pause.  For the first time in years, she smiles back at Jon’s photo, and the tears she feels welling up in her eyes aren’t the beginnings of the despondent sobs she’s used to.  Perhaps Peter was right, perhaps being back in this place, with all of its history and memories, can bring her peace.

Rose can pretend that nothing has changed, or maybe she can pretend that her life is completely different now, and maybe that’s why she finds herself coyly smiling up at Peter as he tells a story about a summer years ago, when he and Jon and JD were just boys.

Maybe that’s why, towards the end of the summer, she finds herself roaming the property in the dark of night, completely unsurprised to find Peter in the garage, staring down at the car he’s been working on restoring for years.

Maybe that’s why she takes his hand and pulls him into the car, saying: “come with me, we need to talk.”

Maybe that’s why she grants him the one thing he’s wanted for the past few years.  “I forgive you,” she says after the car doors close and seal them off from the world.  “For everything, Peter, I forgive you.”

Maybe that’s why, after smiling shyly at each other, she pulls him close and kisses him.

Maybe that’s why.

***

**_Claudia_ **

Claudia has always known that her family was strange, especially her dad’s side of the family.  Her mom’s strange in her own right, but overall, the Ortiz side of the family is frustratingly boring and _normal_ , so it seems like all of her mom’s strangeness has come from being a Morgan via marriage for way too many years.

For the longest time, Claudia hated her family, but she thinks she’s over it now.  Being back at the lake house after all those years away has helped her remember all of the things that she loves about them, weird uncles and people who she can’t exactly tell how she’s related to and all.

Sure, her mom’s been running hot and cold since she announced that they were going back to the lake house for at least a few days.  Sometimes, she seemed annoyed, other times hopeful, and a few times, Claudia caught her mom crying when she didn’t think anyone was around, and if there’s any time she hasn’t known how to handle her mother, it’s when she’s been unbearably sad, and she’s been doing a lot of that since dad died.  Once they’re back at the lake house, though, her mother perks up, or, at least, she does when she’s talking to Uncle Peter, and there’s something weird about that which Claudia can’t quite put her finger on yet.

And at least J is finally warming up to things like _talking to other humans_ , even if they do still spend most of their time sitting away from everyone else, drawing in that battered old sketchbook they carry around.  In fact, almost everyone is doting on J this summer, which would have bothered Claudia a couple of years ago, but now, she knows just how badly her sibling needs to know that there are people out there in their own family who want to see them happy.  Sometimes J emerges from their quiet isolation, even if it’s just for Bike Repairs 101 with Uncle Peter, or Let’s Start A Band drum lessons with Phillip (and if he gives J that drum set at the end of the summer, Claudia knows for a _fact_ that their mother will _never_ forgive Phillip).

After a couple of rocky years of teenage angst, Claudia and J are back on the same page, where they can have fun together, and they know their limits, they know when one is going to get angry or sad or frustrated and they know when to stop.  The rat maze was already built when J and Claudia got to the house, but they’re the ones who spend the most time with it, and Claudia is pretty sure that J is going to make a case for them adopting their favorite rat at the end of their stay.  They’ve already named it Bucky, and Bucky is a real go-getter who can power through that maze like no one’s business.

J spends the most time with Uncle JD, though, and Claudia’s not going to complain; Uncle JD’s weird as hell but J needed someone in their life to _listen,_ and J wasn’t getting that from their mom, and Claudia never knew what to say, other than the trite “it gets better” bullshit that all the school assemblies kept reinforcing.

She’s had a good time reconnecting with the family, but meeting Caleb is a revelation, and she’s not afraid to admit it.  She doesn’t allow her crush on him to fully blossom until three separate people have confirmed that there is no way that they’re related.  She’s determined to take what she wants this summer, to have fun before hauling off to Boston for college, and right now, with Caleb’s hand light on her arm, both of them laughing at a shared joke, she’s decided that what she wants is Caleb.

***

**_iii.  we are the ones who don't slow down at all_ **

**_Rose_ **

She doesn’t know what she’s doing, she doesn’t know why she’s in the car with Peter, shrouded in darkness, suddenly shy, biting her lip, tucking her hair behind her ears, doing all those stupid awkward things that you expect from teenaged girls and not a forty-year old woman.  She hasn’t even had anything to drink, so the heat searing against her skin where Peter touches her and the fire in her gut are all natural, sober reactions, and she’d hate herself for it if she didn’t know that there’s a part of her that’s wanted this since she was sixteen.

**_J_ **

When their mom wasn’t around, off busy flirting with Uncle Peter -- J _sees_ that and J doesn’t know how to feel about it -- Uncle JD gives them a box of stuff that he’d never bothered to take home from the lake house over the years, candles and books and more.   He winks at them as he shoves the box over, like it’s their secret, and later, under the cover of darkness, J sets up their first altar in back corner of the garage, surrounded by old boxes and broken rakes and upended tool sets.  It’s all a little mismatched and haphazard, and J still isn’t quite sure how much they believe in all of this, but it’s comforting to kneel down and raise up their burdens, even if no one else is listening.  

**_Claudia_ **

When her mom wasn’t around, off busy flirting with Uncle Peter -- Claudia _sees_ that and Claudia is kind of freaked out by it -- Caleb takes her by the hand and leads her away from everyone else, telling her how beautiful she is and how he wishes that she’d been at the lake these past few years, because he wishes he could have had more time with her, and she makes him promise to come to her that night in the attic of the guest house.  She wants Caleb and she wants _this_ to remember her summer by, and she is not letting anyone or anything stop her.

**_JD_ **

He’s trying to share as many words of wisdom with J as he can, not knowing when they’ll get back to the lake house again.  Rose seems to have buried the hatchet with Peter, so maybe they’ll come back next summer, but he can’t be sure, and he doesn’t want to take any chances.  Only, this time around, all the words that come out of his mouth are bleak and hopeless. J takes it in stride, but JD is horrified that he can’t come up with anything better, even if it winds up being treacly, tired bullshit that J will roll their eyes at.  When it’s dark out, JD roams the property, hands in his pockets, trying to soak the whole place in and make his peace with it, and he finds the altar that J has built in the garage.  It brings a smile to his face, knowing that J’s doing what they want to find themselves, no matter how unconventional.

**_Peter_ **

Peter doesn’t know how any of this started.  Was it when Rose actually answered his phone call?  Was it when she and the kids actually show up to the lake house?  Was it when he decided to take some time away from everyone to tinker with the engine of the car he’s been rebuilding ever since he moved back to the lake house?  Or was it when Rose said, inexplicably and without prompting, that she forgave him for all of his years of bullshit and half-truths and immature jealousy.  He doesn’t know, but he can’t put much thought into it whenever Rose has her hands fisted in the lapels of his blazer and is kissing him, and he’s not going to lie, he’s wanted this since he was eighteen years old, but he doesn’t deserve it, he doesn’t deserve her forgiveness and her kiss and her, her, her.  When the kiss ends, he smiles at her, and then pulls her close, burying his face in the crook of her neck, breathing her in.  This is probably something they should talk about, but for right then, he’ll take the gift he’s been given, this kiss and this forgiveness, and be content with it.

***

_**iv. there's nobody there to catch us when we fall** _

_**J** _

What J remembers most about the end of the summer, aside from what happened to Uncle JD, is all of the fighting. It surrounds them on all sides, but the biggest offender is their mother.

Their mother spends hours lecturing Claudia for being _so irresponsible_ and for _ruining her life_ and for _not thinking of the consequences_ because _getting rid of that baby is unacceptable_.  Their mom acts like Claudia is the first person on earth to have accidentally gotten pregnant, but J’s done the math, and they know that Claudia was born only six months after their parents were married, and there’s no way that Claudia was a preemie.  J spends a lot of time weighing their options over this.  J could tell Claudia that she was a surprise baby, too, and that therefore their mother is full of shit and is misplacing eighteen years worth of feelings onto Claudia.  But if Claudia’s never done that math before, J doesn’t think they want to be the one to break that information to her.  And if she has, then she already knows that her mother is a hypocrite.

Their mother calls up Lynnie Harrison and yells at her, for sending Caleb to the lake unsupervised to take advantage of her daughter, and based on how quickly that conversation ends, J is pretty sure that Lynnie hung up on their mother.  “Claudia can make her own choices,” J keeps hearing their mother mutter sarcastically under her breath, quoting something Lynnie must have said to her. “Claudia isn’t you. Claudia is her own person.”  J wonders if Lynnie’s done the math, too.

J’s mother never yells at Caleb.  J isn’t surprised.

She yells at Uncle Peter, too, and the way she fights with him is different than J expected.  It reminds them a lot of how their parents fought, before their dad died, because both of them fought dirty.  In all of the mess and tragedy of this summer, something has loosened Uncle Peter’s tongue and for the first time, he’s not holding back with her.  J is fascinated by the way the two of them fight, even if eavesdropping does mean that they learn too much about the decades-long _thing_ that lurked between Uncle Peter and their mom.   

Uncle Peter was the one who found Uncle JD in the garage, and even though it wasn’t his fault, even though it wasn’t any of their faults, and even though J’s mom didn’t always even like Uncle JD that much in the first place, she needs to yell at someone about it, and Uncle Peter’s the most convenient target, because whatever he saw, he’s not telling, and the last remaining Morgan brother has been drowning himself in bourbon ever since the police left the lake house.

Surprisingly, she doesn’t turn her anger on J, which is just fine.  J’s used to being the most convenient target for their mother’s misplaced rage and half-baked lectures, so this is something new.  Instead, their mother seems to have softened towards them, in the aftermath of what happened to Uncle JD.  It seems like she can only be an adequate parent to one of her kids at a time, and since Claudia’s on the shit list at the moment, it’s J’s turn to actually receive some unconditional love.  Their mother even slowly stops calling them Jodi and picks up on J, instead, which is a huge step, even if she does still get the pronouns wrong.  

It shouldn’t have had to take their uncle’s mysterious death for their mother to start treating them like a human being, but J’s not going to knock it.  It’s about time.  

 

 


End file.
